February 11th, 2010

On wasted time, and dashed ambition @ 10:52 am

I've been playing Final Fantasy III on the DS for the past couple of months. I got all the way to the end where you "jump into the void" to fight the final boss. You have to fight four mini bosses, and then four other boss clones to get four ribbons before the last boss. This whole process takes about three hours and there is no save point. After you do all that you can fight the final boss, who proceeded to kill me in four rounds! Apparently the boss gets four attacks per turn.

Did I mention that there is no save point in the void. If at any point you die, you have to start all over and do the entire void again. Now I have to repeat three hours just to try again? That's really poor design considering how difficult the last guy is!

Getting obliterated by that final boss is hard on the morale, but once you figure out a strategy and take her out, it's a pretty sweet feeling of accomplishment. Having no save point does suck, but I also think a lot of games make it too easy on us by allowing us to save after every single decision, thus eliminating the risk that makes it fun.

Then again, I beat that boss on my second try. If it would've taken 3+ attempts, I probably would've smashed my DS into a million pieces.